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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
"The New New Thing" author once said J-school ate his brain. Guess where he's teaching now.
Oct 25, 1999 | "C'mon," said the other professor, "tell us your nut graph." I gave up and dropped the pad. "What's a nut graph?" I asked. "He doesn't know what a nut graph is!" someone shouted. The adjunct professor took pity. He tried again, gently. "In the article you are writing about the school," he said. "What's your null hypothesis?" My null hypothesis? My null hypothesis! My angle. My bias. My take. My ... point ... of ... view! "My null hypothesis," I said, "is that the Columbia Journalism School is all bullshit." They paused. "That's a good null hypothesis," said one.
-- From "J-School Ate My Brain" by Michael Lewis, New Republic, April 19, 1993.
Oct. 25, 1999 | Six years ago I was holed up in Santa Barbara, Calif., recovering from a year-long Central American surf tour and slowly reentering life via journalism poverty. Hoping to vault into the upper echelons of the Fourth Estate, I pondered taking a masters degree in journalism. But my visions of J-school were dashed upon reading a New Republic article by a rising media star named Michael Lewis. (Yes, the same Michael Lewis who wrote "Liar's Poker," the bestselling exposi of 1980s Wall Street.) According to "J-School Ate My Brain," CSJ was worse than useless and the concept of J-school in general was highly suspect.
Imagine my surprise when Michael Lewis, now a famous journalist who draws million-dollar advance fees on his books, became visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Lewis signed on to spend August 1998 through January 2000 there, spending some of that time finishing "The New New Thing," his just-released book about Silicon Valley.
I asked Lewis what a noted J-school hater was doing teaching J-school. "I've been waiting for someone like you to call," Lewis wrote in an e-mail to me. "I passed that piece out to the last class, to their great bemusement. Give me a buzz at the office later this week."
The school's dean, Orville Schell, had not read the article, nor was he aware of it. He seemed unconcerned. "What can I say? I think most journalism schools would eat my brain. I didn't go to journalism school," admitted Schell. "He's an iconoclast and I think that's good to have at a journalism school. Journalists are not necessarily institution-friendly. We really wouldn't want it any other way."
Lewis' students found the article and the apparent hypocrisy more entertaining than troubling. "It was a funny article, which was sort of the point. It's sort of one of those things where if you don't laugh, you cry. Now that I have a job at Wired, it's a lot funnier," said student Brad King, who says he got his job in no small part thanks to Lewis.
Funny articles aside, the medicine Lewis is dishing out seems to be the best-tasting Kool-Aid at the J-school. After a steady diet of technical news writing, most students welcome with open arms the freedom of Lewis' class. "At the J-school, it's not very politic to think that you can have a career without paying your dues," said Jessica Deeter, a second-year student in Lewis' class. "The honorable thing to do seems to be to suck it up and do your two-year internship. Michael doesn't buy into that religion. Frankly, it's the first class where I feel I can write the way I want to write ... He teaches from his own experience. And obviously, he is doing a lot of things right."
